02. Shadows of the Well of Souls (32 page)

"Good work, Gus! And quick thinking! This is a real break in a number of ways. If they needed this enough to come back for it, they'd have turned around by now. The company people won't miss it because they'll assume it was taken aboard the cutter, and the cutter might not come back this way for weeks or even remember it if and when it does. Now, if we can only get this aboard and get enough wind to get out of this cove, we're good for the distance."

"How's that? You mean you can't get
out
of this place?"

"Not without some help from nature, or what passes for nature on the Well World. Come on—let's get started getting this aboard so if and when something comes up we don't have to dump it or get stuck until somebody finds us."

"You're ridin' a bit low in the water, ain't you? It looked kinda different."

"Yeah, we, ah, took on a little water, but I don't think it's serious. We might have to get on the pumps later if it proves a real problem, but I'm not worried about it now."

Gus slid back over the side and positioned himself on one side of the raft. "Cap, my arms can't lift their shadows, but I figure I can get under it and get it balanced, I can lift it up on my head. You'll have to grab it and pull it aboard, though. Anything that falls in, I'll try and get afterward."

"Good enough. I hope
I
can do it. I'm strong for my weight, but I'm only sixty-one kilos or so."

"Huh? What's that in pounds?"

"Old English measure? Jeez, I barely recall. About 135, I think."

"Well, you're not a ninety-eight-pound weakling, so you'll have to do. I'll help if I can. With this flat tail and a head as hard as my mother always said it was, I should be able to give it a little oomph."

The first two tries didn't make it, but they lost only one carton to the water and it floated nearby. On the third try he was aware that Terry was now awake and watching them. When Gus came up again, Nathan grabbed the rope affixed to the raft and pulled up and back with all his might. After almost getting it, he felt it start to slip away again, his arm muscles aching, but suddenly the raft and all its contents came up onto the deck almost as if they were weightless, causing him to fall over backward.

He got up, rubbing his bottom and reflecting that there certainly was no energy protection against friction burns, but he knew what had happened. Terry had seen the problem and had added a bit of power to the equation through him. The whole raft was now securely on deck.

Gus retrieved the lost box in his gaping mouth and brought it aboard, then deposited it with the others. There were two very large puncture marks in the carton, and some white stuff was coming out of one of them.

"Whooo!"
Gus gasped. "That's more heavy work than I've done since I got here! You wanna do inventory on it or what?"

"Might as well, as long as we're still becalmed," Brazil responded. "Besides, if there's anything here ready to eat, I can stand something, and so can she."

This was where the Well's data helped him, although he was barely aware of it. Among the cartons were a number of suspect items, but he instinctively seemed to know which ones to keep and which ones to discard. Gus had been right—most of it was more than useful.

"We're going to have to get this below fairly quickly," Brazil said at last. "Most of it, anyway. We'll leave these three on deck. It's a bit damp below, but I think we can keep these high enough to keep 'em out of the wet. I think I can handle individual boxes. I'd best get to it. Leave this one with the fruit open and this one with the vegetables, too, so Teiry can start eating. Watch her, though. She has a tendency to eat absolutely everything, and I need something!"

Individually, the cartons weren't all that heavy, and he quickly transferred the nine remaining ones below to the unused crew sleeping quarters, securing them with netting. The one leaking the powder from the fang marks he could do little about, but the marks were high enough that even if they leaked a fair amount of the sweet-tasting meal, there would still be enough.

The water was still ankle deep, but that reassured rather than bothered him. Nothing more was coming in, and the new load wasn't so heavy that the whole balance of the ship would be adversely affected.

When he came back on deck, Gus commented, "I gotta say, Cap, you were sure right about her appetite. She's just tearin' through that stuff like there's no tomorrow. Better get some while you can."

He nodded, opened the other carton, and found some premade and wrapped loaves of what appeared to be a kind of French bread. Inside, it had a yellowish look and contained small bits of exceptionally sweet cornlike kernels, but it tasted just fine. He was just reaching to rescue a large purplish applelike fruit the size of a small melon from the ravenous Terry when he suddenly noticed something.

"A breeze! I feel a breeze!" he almost shouted. Forgetting his hunger, he ran to the wheel. "Gus! Go forward and raise the anchor. Use the winch! Yeah, there!"

At last!
he thought.
Food, water, and even a little daylight left, and along comes a breeze! We're getting
out
of this hole!

Out, yes,
a little corner of him responded.
Out and away, toward harsh reality, outward to smash yet another good dream . . .

Ogadon

THERE WAS NO GOOD PLACE TO HOUSE THE DILLIANS IN THE Gekir coastal town of Port Saar, and since Erdomese, too, were basically unsuited for the network of steps and ladders which the catlike natives found no trouble at all, they set up a camp on the edge of town, along the road between the town proper and the port up at the Ogadon border.

The chief, in the tradition of her people, invited them all to the royal guest quarters and to a banquet, but Mavra explained some of the problems the others might have in attending. The governor seemed to understand and instead issued them something of far more value: a provincial conscription note, which was basically an account with local merchants that guaranteed that they would be paid by the local treasury.

As was common in many smaller port towns everywhere, businesses closed promptly at sunset, so they all took advantage of the conscription note in the couple of hours of sunlight remaining.

Port Saar was not the same sort of town as the big seaports they'd seen. Rather, it seemed more like the small rural market towns of much of Central and South America, minus electricity and modern conveniences.

Like their underwater neighbors, the Ogadon, Gekirs were basically carnivores, but nonetheless they spent a good deal of time on small- and medium-sized farms growing fresh fruits and vegetables for export to the railhead just inside Itus or by coastal ships to other nearby hexes. It was, one merchant noted, actually very practical; in the farming business the pickers and other help never ate the profits.

Although adding to and freshening their provisions was the main idea, Lori, with Mavra Chang's permission, used some of the credit on Alowi, as Julian now insisted on being called. In fact, the few times
Lori
had slipped and said "Julian," she hadn't even responded, convincing him that wherever she was stuffing her past had absorbed even the memory of that name. In fact, it was becoming next to impossible not to think of her as a native-born Erdomese female.

He bought her a necklace she seemed to fancy, some sweet-smelling perfumes, and a set of combs that while clearly not designed for Erdomese, worked rather well on the hair and tail and in cleaning the short fur. There were also some nice-looking and modestly priced clips that were the right size for tail clips; Lori didn't know and didn't really want to know for whom or what they were actually intended.

At Mavra's suggestion, they also looked at heavy coats, since they would be going into unknown climates and might well need them. There weren't too many available for non-Gekir types and none that were really great fits, but a sufficient number of races were to one degree or another humanoid that even the Erdomese found rough fits. The Dillians, it appeared, had brought their own along, and Anne Marie insisted that she could alter the new coats to some degree to make them fit better.

They also finally met a Gekir male.

He was pretty easy to spot; thin, gaunt-looking, and smaller than a female, he was a sort of faded gray color all over except for his outsized lionlike snow white mane. He had a medium-length tail that ended in an explosive puff of white fur, further contrasting him with the tailless females. He also wore matching bracelets and anklets of a golden color with ornate designs in them and a large golden oval nose ring and appeared to be perfumed.

The people had overall been quite friendly, and so Lori couldn't resist trying to strike up a conversation with him in the street.

"Your pardon, sir, but you are the first man we have seen since coming to Gekir, and I was just curious. I mean, it began to look like there were no men at all here."

The Gekir seemed amused. "Oh, yes, there be a lot of us, only not nearly in the same numbers as women. The average be about fifteen women to one man. It be different where you come from, I suppose."

"In some ways, yes, in others, no. In Erdom there are ten females for every male, but as you can see from my wife here, the men are larger, and because of the hand development and upper muscle strength, men run the affairs while the women run the household and bear and raise the children."

"Huh! Think of that! Dunno if I'd like
that
or not! Got enough trouble just doin' me male duties."

It turned out that the males, smaller, far weaker, and fewer in number, ran nothing at all. They also tended to be uneducated and limited in what they could do. What they
could
do was have sex, apparently in nearly unlimited amounts, and they tended to do that essentially as a profession, often doing a "circuit of me regulars" and spending their time at those "regulars' " homes. They also performed services from shopping for busy women to baby-sitting and took little interest in much outside this life. If the male they met was as typical as he said he was, they liked it that way.

"See, all the time they likes us around, and once a month they needs us, so they keeps us pretty happy," the Gekir male told him. The general feeling among the women, he explained in a low voice, was that men were stupid and incompetent except at the one thing they were needed for, and the men had a vested interest in maintaining those attitudes. "They even cook for us," he told Lori. "Think we don't know how."

The male begged off further talk, since he had a "real important appointment just after sunset," but he'd revealed enough.

In Gekir, the women ruled and the men were small and weak, considered inferior, and used entirely as sex objects. It was even more extreme than Erdom by a great deal, and it disturbed
Lori
almost as much as the reverse would have. It answered one of those nagging questions in a way he hadn't wanted it answered.

The parallel seemed to be with many Earth insects. The black widow was obvious, but many male spiders existed only for one purpose and then died, not to mention male bees and many other examples. A lot of women he'd known back on Earth would have loved this kind of arrangement, but he wasn't so sure. Was his distaste, though, just because he was now a man himself, or was it because the same offenses committed in reverse felt no more moral?

It was a question he pondered as they went back to the camp and set up to cook dinner as the sun went down. After determining that there were quite a number of things both Erdomese and Dillians could eat in common, Lori did not object to Alowi and Anne Marie preparing the meal, with him translating as needed. It did not in fact come out bad at all.

Mavra had remained in town, she said to talk to some people before her official dinner later that night. She told them that they should not wait for her and that they should get some sleep.

Alowi did the cleanup, then insisted on using her new combs and brushes to get the last vestiges of grime from Lori's fur and tail, and he even allowed a little perfume to be used to cover the mild but remaining swamp odor.

The Dillians excused themselves and went off into the shorter, greener grass nearby and eventually seemed to lock themselves for sleep.

With his hand still bandaged and saying by occasional aches and sharp pains that it should remain so for a while longer, there wasn't much for the Erdomese to do but try to sleep themselves. Alowi cuddled up close to him and was soon out cold; after the previous night with so little sleep she had to be exhausted. Still, Lori would have liked to have discussed the oddly different sexual balance of Gekir and perhaps talked about the old days, as they always had, but he couldn't. Those conversations had been with Julian, and Julian, it appeared, no longer existed for all practical purposes.

He felt doubly guilty for that somehow. He'd treated her as less than a partner, all along driving home the division that must have raged within her no matter how much she suppressed it, and it had been his own stupid injuries that had caused the final break.

Nobody else had gotten even a scratch. Not even Jul— Alowi. Mister Macho had to leap before he looked, jump too fast, not notice an embankment.
He
had to be out first, since
he
was going to look out for the others. The poor, defenseless others.
The girls.

Yeah, right.

Damn it!
he thought, furious with himself.
When the hell did I turn into every guy I ever loathed in high school?

It was not exactly the kind of grand commercial vessel that both the Dillians and the Erdomese had used to reach Itus. It was in fact small, low but with big masts, and had a central funnel so that it could be used under steam where possible. It was built for silence and speed, not for comfort and convenience, and for its ability to run with a minimal crew.

It was also painted a dull black, and even the sails and ropes had been dyed to a very dark gray hue. The bridge was actually exposed as in the ancient sailing ships of Earth, but there was a small secondary cabin between the main wheel and the funnel with a duplicate wheel that could be engaged and that had some very exotic-looking, if now totally turned off, electronic gear.